Japan is a hyper-aging society, and its government is encouraging robotic solutions to address elder care labor shortage. Therefore, authorities have adopted an agenda of introducing social robots. However, increasing numbers of people in Japan are becoming emotionally attached to anthropomorphic machines, and their introduction into elder care may thus be perceived as contentious. By exploring human engagement with social robots in the care context, this paper argues that rapid technological advances in the twenty-first century will see robots achieve some level of agency, contributing to human society by carving out unique roles for themselves and by bonding with humans. Nevertheless, the questions remain of whether there should be a difference between humans attributing agency to a being and those beings having the inherent ability to produce agency and how we might understand that difference if unable to access the minds of other humans, let alone nonhumans, some of which are not even alive in the classical sense. Using the example of an interaction between an elderly woman and a social robot, we engage with these questions; discuss linguistic, attributed, and inherent agencies; and suggest that a processual type of agency might be most appropriate for understanding human-robot interaction.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Conceptualizing Robotic Agency. Social Robots in Elder Care in Contemporary Japan


    Contributors:
    Aronsson, Anne (author) / Holm, Fynn (author)

    Publication date :

    2021-06-07


    Remarks:

    doi:10.7358/rela-2020-0102-arho
    Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism; Vol 8, No 1-2 (2020): Finding Agency in Nonhumans; 17-35 ; 2280-9643 ; 2283-3196



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    629





    No thank you to humanized robots : attitudes to care robots in elder care services.

    Johansson-Pajala, Rose-Marie / Zander, Viktoria / Gustafsson, Christine et al. | BASE | 2022

    Free access


    Positive Turn in Elder-Care Workers’ Views Toward Telecare Robots

    Turja, Tuuli / Taipale, Sakari / Niemelä, Marketta et al. | BASE | 2022

    Free access

    Conceptualizing Images

    Buxton, H. / Mukerjee, A. | British Library Online Contents | 2000